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Though one cannot always Remember exactly why one has been happy, There is no forgetting that one was.
W. H. Auden
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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Remember
Always
Forgetting
Exactly
Though
Forget
Happy
Cannot
More quotes by W. H. Auden
a culture is no better than its woods
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We all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons.
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Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one.
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There has been a vast output of critical studies in contemporary poetry, some of them first rate, but I do not think that , as a rule, a poet should read them.
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The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father has no position at all -- isn't respected in the least. Even the American passion for laxatives can be explained as an oral manifestation. They want to get rid of any unpleasantness taken in through the mouth.
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America has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who claims authority as a member of an élite which knows the law in some field or other, is an object of distrust and resentment.
W. H. Auden
It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, What should I write at the age of sixty-four, but never, What should I write in 1940.
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Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.
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Each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.
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Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm.
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As biological organisms made of matter, we are subject to the laws of physics and biology: as conscious persons who create our own history we are free to decide what that history shall be. Without science, we should have no notion of equality without art, no notion of liberty.
W. H. Auden
The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages, what just reason could he give for refusing?
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Marriage is rarely bliss But, surely it would be worse As particles to pelt At thousands of miles per sec About a universe In which a lover's kiss Would either not be felt Or break the loved one's neck.
W. H. Auden
The most difficult problem in personal knowledge, whether of oneself or of others, is the problem of guessing when to think as a historian and when to think as an anthropologist.
W. H. Auden
Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.
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There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade's End is one of them.
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A verbal art like poetry is reflective it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
W. H. Auden
Time will say nothing but I told you so.
W. H. Auden
If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.
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Even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life
W. H. Auden
